Might as Well

The first task, after arriving in the Valley of Distortion, was to find a spot where they could set up camp, and deal with all the fractures.

As Sam looked at the distorted valley where up was down and left was fish, he knew that a lesser man, or rather any man (or woman) would have despaired upon laying their eyes on it. But he was not a lesser man. He had future knowledge and an aerial view on his side.

From his future knowledge, he knew that all valleys like this one had a way in and a semi-central location where a camp could be set up, like some kind of eye of the storm.

And thanks to his foray into ritual magic, he had been provided a very nice aerial view with his mana sense, which in turn gave him the clues to find the way in.

“Follow me, don’t stray, and stay silent. If somebody or something talks to you, ignore it.” He spoke up before closing his eyes and ignoring the quiet murmuring behind him.

Instead, he used his mana sense and turned it toward the distortion. Immediately, his mental eyes were assaulted with what was basically visual chaff. The mana in the area churned like during a storm, big currents of mana going every which way, constantly changing the manascape.

However, like streams in the oceans, there were several gently flowing mana rivers deep under the churning surface, and of those calm streams only one led to the outside. It was kind of lucky that it terminated not far from the location where they had rested.

Eyes still closed, he spoke up. “Let’s go!” And began walking in the direction of the calm manastream.

While he could only see the vague outline of his teammates, thanks to his mana sight, Sam still saw their heads turn to each other. He imagined they were wondering what he was up to…

They didn’t have to walk far and soon they stood before the entrance to the Valley of Distortion.

“Once again, I repeat. Follow me, stay silent, and if somebody or something speaks, ignore it. Got it?”

“Sure, boss!”

“Yes.”

“Understood!”

“What if they are cute?”

As one, they turned to Katie. She smiled cheerfully but didn’t seem to be joking. Finally, it was Sam who spoke up. “If they’re friendly, you can talk to them.”

“What if they’re mean?”

“You have a weapon, don’t you?”

“Hmm… that doesn’t sound fun.” She raised her finger to her chin, deep in thought, before her face brightened as if a light bulb had turned on. “I know! I’ll feed them to Puffball!”

“Meow!” the aforementioned ‘cat’ chose this moment to announce their presence with an approving meow.

Sam opened his mouth, and after giving it a thought, he closed it. He just shook his head and turned back toward the distortions.

“Let’s start before I think about that too much…” he murmured, then closed his eyes again. And with trepidation tinged with the excitement of adventure, he took his first step on the road toward the center of this particular storm.

The first few steps were easy, as if the area was lulling them into a false sense of security, then as they took maybe the twentieth step, suddenly the mana in the air changed.

Before, it felt like a refreshing breeze on a slightly windy spring day, but now it turned into a cloying tropical wind. However, instead of being saturated with water, it was mana itself that they had to wade through.

The next part of the journey felt like every one of them had heavy weights on their bodies, making every step extremely hard. Credit where credit is due, nobody let out even a squeak.

Sam could feel his mana shield straining against the pressure from the manastream, but thankfully, his prodigious mana regeneration managed to keep up with the damage. So far…

Keeping an eye on the snaking manastream, he continuously led the team deeper into the valley. Sometimes they went forward, sometimes they went in slalom, a few times they zigged and zagged, and Sam was pretty sure they had to go around a specific stone several times before Puffball ate something and the manastream led them away from the area.

And all through their journey, there was a constant murmur of whispering voices, audible but not understandable. As if a vast audience was observing them from high up in balconies, discussing them with casual disinterest.

An hour into the journey, the surrounding pressure changed once again. Instead of heavy pressure, the mana seemed to solidify, and the pellets of mana began to pelt them, not unlike hail.

For a second, he wondered what it looked like from the outside, but he had to focus on the mana hail. He quickly summoned his own mana, and with a flex of will, that somehow still managed to amaze him to this day, shaped his own mana into the well-known shape of snowplows.

Instantly, he could feel mana slamming against his mana walls and his own mana being consumed, but after doing quick math, Sam decided that it would last. Then, with renewed vigor, he continued his journey, the rest of the team following him silently. Though he heard a few relieved sighs.

By his estimate, they were almost through the hail, somewhere near the exit to the calm part of the valley, when he heard a yelp, which caused him to stop and turn around. He saw, through his mana sense, some kind of shapeless blob, made of rainbow-colored mana, swoop down, right at Dan’s fiery yet extremely controlled mana.

However, before he could react, the disturbing mana of Puffball, who unsurprisingly blended in well with all the surrounding distortions, jumped up, enlarged, and swallowed the incoming attacker. At least Sam hoped it was an attacker…

He waited until the ‘cat’ got situated back on Katie’s head, whose yellowish-blue mana was jumping around in her body like a hyperactive five-year-old who found the candy drawer, and continued plowing through the mana hail.

Then, as he saw they were getting closer to the calm eye in the distortion storm, he felt the hail decrease to his relief.

Ten steps…

Five steps…

Three…

Two…

And they were free of the manastream.

Sam shut off his mana sight and finally opened his eyes and beheld a clearing the size of a small city block, dotted with trees, some rocks, and a quaint little lake. He nodded in satisfaction then turned toward his friends.

Clarissa looked bedraggled, Dan looked like his hair had gone through at least three carwashes, Isabella was glaring at Katie (though that was not that surprising) and the berserker woman was petting Puffball while smiling excitedly.

“That was awesome, Sam! Can we do it again? Can we?” she asked excitedly.

“Absolutely not!” came the not-so-calm rebuke from Clarissa as she crossed her arms in an x shape. “I don’t want to see any more of…that!” she exclaimed, panting slightly and waving her hands vaguely in the direction of the wall of distortion that looked oddly smug.

“But…but…the cuties!”

Sam looked on as Clarissa stalked forward to no doubt educate Katie on the fact that not everybody found non-Euclidean monsters cute, with Isabella looking excited at the prospect of violence, while Dan was gearing up to intervene when they all froze as they heard a throat being cleared.

Sam had only one thought: ‘Finally…’

They all turned around in a second, only to behold a person-shaped indentation in the world. It had legs, arms, and a head, but all they saw was an empty space where the body should have been.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw his teammates reach for their weapons, but he simply held up a hand, stopping them. Then he addressed the being in front of them.

“Hello! Can we help you?” he asked as normally as he could. There was still a chance that what the other Sam had heard was a complete fabrication, but for now, he would go with what he knew.

They saw a being nod. “Yes, you can.” The voice was oddly deep and male-sounding. “I prefer not to waste my words, especially on primitives like you. So here is the short and sweet.” He began talking, but surprisingly, they couldn’t hear one iota of condescension in their voice. “Twenty words or fewer: Dimensional energy go big boom. Holes on the barrier between our world and yours. Go destroy fractures to close holes.” They let the words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “Understood?”

Sam inwardly celebrating, but showing none of that on his face, nodded. “Yes. We understand.”

The being nodded once again. “Good. I’ll keep this area safe while you’re alive.” Then it vanished, leaving a small football-sized black energy, which hung there for a moment, before exploding and sending out a wave of energy that completely ignored Sam and his team, terminating at the edge of the calm zone where they could see a thin line of the same energy, acting like a fence.

Sam even turned his mage sight back on temporarily to check it out. To him, it looked like the distortion was straining against an invisible film. Sometimes the film bulged, but it didn’t pop, keeping the crazy mana back.

Then, as he opened his eyes, a new quest appeared in front of him and the others.

[Congratulations! You have been chosen to close this cluster of chaotic fractures to heal the fabric of the universe!]

[New quest acquired!]

[Volatile Valley]

[Through unconventional ways (still wondering how you did that!) you found something called a Valley of Distortion. There you managed to navigate to the center (what are you?) and met a very unhelpful and inscrutable being who charged you and your team to destroy these fractures. Why they want to do that, what they get out of it, you don’t know. But does it matter?]

[Time Limit: As long as you persevere]

[Penalty: Getting lost in the area between dimensions, which would deposit you in a random place after you exit. Including on the top of active volcanos. Not very healthy!]

[Reward: Maybe]

‘You’re getting sassy, game…’ he mused as he read through the quest description. He looked up from his reading and waited for the others to finish.

Once everyone finished the reading, he clapped his hands together and began to distribute the tasks.

“Katie, go patrol.”

“Yes, sir!” she saluted smartly and within a second, she was off with Puffball snoring on her head.

He turned to Clarissa. “Go check the water and flora.” She nodded and also left.

Next was Isabella. “Go check all the fractures we can reach from here to see what the system says about them.”

“You got it!” came the chirpy answer.

Then finally Sam turned to Dan. “Come on, let’s set up a camp. I have a feeling we are going to be here for a while.”

Dan could only wryly smile at hearing that.

An hour later, there was a small circle of tents, reinforced by stones they dug up while trying to make the ground even, shaped by Sam’s oft-neglected earth magic. They also cut down some trees to make some benches and a rudimentary table.

Clarissa checked everything, and while she found a few interesting specimens among the local flora, nothing was dangerous to them.

Katie found a few more of those ‘things’ that Sam had no name for, or desire to think about, but all of them ended in the belly of one satisfied eldritch being that liked to masquerade as a cat. Lucky was off chasing butterflies, his tail wagging as he jumped around the flower fields dotting the area where they set up.

Hawky was sitting on a nearby branch, watching as his master, Dan, was cutting down trees.

Melody the swan somehow managed to get hold of a small knife and was shadow-fighting with it in her beak with Isabella cheering her on and giving advice here and there after she returned from her scouting.

Altogether, a very idyllic scene.

Sam smiled, then returned to the piece of paper on the hastily put-together table. On it, a rough drawing of their location with all the fractures that they could reach without going inside the distortion marked on it, courtesy of Isabella.

There were even a few notes about them.

He started reading Isabella’s elegant writing.

Small fracture, five people, plants, three charge

He nodded, just as he expected.

Back in the future of the other Sam, he watched in envy as guilds bragged about all the fascinating loot and skills they managed to get from the first Valley of Distortion. By the time it was finished, every guild all over the world was looking for these. And when one was found… It was almost as big of an event as finding an unattributed crystal mine.

No matter what, blood always drenched the ground enough that there were several groups of blood mages, hired by the local government that were sent in to clean up the carnage, almost like crime scene cleaners.

Sam hoped to avoid such bloodshed...